Three former Prometheus winners, a frequent Best Novel finalist and a first-time nominee are competing to win this year’s Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
The Prometheus Best Novel Judging Committee, drawn from the LFS membership, has selected five 2025 novels as 2026 finalists from 14 nominated works. The Best Novel finalists, listed in alphabetical order by author, are Storm-Dragon, by Dave Freer (Raconteur Press); War by Other Means, by Karl K. Gallagher (Kelt Haven Press); No Man’s Land, by Sarah Hoyt (Goldport Press); A Kiss for Damocles, by J. Kenton Pierce (Raconteur Press); and Powerless, by Harry Turtledove (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy.)
Pierce was nominated for the first time for a Prometheus Award, so his inclusion as a Best Novel finalist is particularly impressive in a year that many judges feel has been a superior one for freedom-themed SF/fantasy.
Gallagher has been nominated quite a few times for the Prometheus Award, ending up a Best Novel finalist quite often. War by Other Means is his seventh work to become a Best Novel finalist.
Aside from his first nomination and Best Novel finalist in 2018 for his Torchship trilogy (Torchship, Torchship Pilot and Torchship Captain), all the rest of Gallagher’s nominations have been for works within his ambitious Fall of the Censors series.
That includes Storm Between the Stars (2021), Between Home and Ruin and Seize What’s Held Dear (2022), Captain Trader Helmsman Spy (2023), and Swim Among the People (2024). War by Other Means is Book 7 of the projected nine-volume series.
Freer, Hoyt and Turtledove, meanwhile, have each won one Prometheus Award for Best Novel.
Turtledove won in 2008 for The Gladiator.
With Powerless, Turtledove has been nominated for Best Novel eight times – including for Between the Rivers in 1999 (more recently, recognized as a Prometheus Hall of Fame finalist), Ruled Britannia in 2004, Opening Atlantis in 2009, Liberating Atlantis and The United States of Atlantis in 2010 and Joe Steele in 2016.
With eight Best Novel nominations, Turtledove ranks among the top ten authors to have received the most Prometheus Award nominations since the award was first presented in 1979.
Hoyt won in 2011 for Darkship Thieves.
With No Man’s Land, her three-volume novel, Hoyt has been nominated six times for Best Novel. That includes Darkship Renegades (a 2013 finalist), A Few Good Men (a 2014 finalist), Through Fire (2017) and Darkship Revenge (a 2018 finalist.)
Freer won in 2023 for Cloud-Castles.
Storm-Dragon, which was written as a Young Adult novel for ages 8 to 18 but broadly appeals to adults as well, is his second Prometheus nomination.
Full-length reviews of each Best Novel finalist, explaining how each fits the distinctive focus of the Prometheus Awards, have been (or soon will be) posted on the Prometheus Blog.
So stay tuned.
ABOUT THE LFS AND THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, join the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer international association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
Libertarian futurists understand that culture matters. We believe that literature and the arts can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future. In some ways, culture can be even more influential and powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other’s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.
* Prometheus winners: For a full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees – including in the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website. This page includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of the 106 works that have won a Prometheus since 1979 fits the awards’ distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.
* Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog’s Video page.
* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.
* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society’s Facebook page for comments, updates and links to the latest Prometheus Blog posts.
